So many roles he’s played over the years. He’s special.
As a backdrop to some evening work earlier this week, I watched ‘Sling Blade’ with Billy Bob Thornton, (another peach of an actor).
Robert Duvall as his father was brilliant.
(And Dwight Yokam the perfect manipulative, arrogant, self serving, pushy ass, covering an insecure, misdirected man….WELL played)! So much of what he performed in this film, (Yokam), how he moves, his whiney voice….the nuiance, the immersion into his character….terrific! OR, there is always the possibility that he’s like that in ‘real’ life.
I like that expression…’real life’! Funny. It’s all real. It’s something too when you notice how you’ve changed and move differently than you perhaps once did in your life NOW, than perhaps long ago or even awhile ago. Our blueprint is our blueprint but all drawings can be erased or painted over…we can play whatever character suits us best.
Back to my protagonist. ‘Tender Mercies’ is perhaps my favorite Robert Duvall film. His struggle and dichotomy of character so perfectly played.
His recent ‘Get Low’ is another study in character, his final speech about losing the married woman he was planning to run away with is heart wrenching, tragic, real. He touches deep within and with that specificity we feel it too, as we have all been to these places of deep regret, experienced loss, the alone moments that shape and chisel exactly WHO we are.
This is part of why I loved acting.
So, this week, I watched Duvall, met some new people, wondered how to discern one ‘reality’ from my next, spoke to a woman who I grew up with whose father died….hearing her say ‘I love you’ to me despite not being in touch for almost 40 years and I visited with a former love, realizing how while we conversed, I’d so clearly moved on and why.
And such is life, moving, moving, twisting and turning. I propped my eyes open and worked late into the evening last night, organizing, clearly, throwing out more STUFF, to move my business forward, to move ME forward, to create time for new things as I’m uplifted by potential and certainly hope to exercise a GOOD measure of MY potential before leaving the earth.
(And speaking of leaving the planet, have you seen Robert Duvall in ‘Road’ with Viggo Mortgenson…(another favorite). Stunning in his portrayal of the old man with glossy, opaque eyes hanging on in a post apolcalyptic world).
So, as we say up north….’God willing and the creek don’t freeze’….or, if I’ll let go and allow all good to come in as she wants only to do.
With tender mercy and gratitude AND a heart wide open, so it is. This or better says I, this or better!! I say, BETTER…because I can. Why not?
So, it’s probably Robert Duvall, and people like him who fuel and inspire me, the way they weave who they are and who they are becoming, their ‘characters’ so to speak, which, by their example (in ‘real life’ or fiction), will help transport me ‘there’.
BB Webb